Incitatus was Emperor Caligula’s (AD37-41) favourite stallion. He loved his horse so much that he bestowed the horse with a marble stable, had 18 servants look after its daily needs, reportedly fed it oats with gold flakes and had a collar encrusted with precious stones. Incitatus’ fame does not end there. Caligula made him the first citizen of Rome and soon after made him senator.
When I think of evolution, I think of small changes over millions of years, but not so for the hardy tomcods of the once heavily polluted Hudson river. Deadly PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) were discharged to the river by General Electric Co between 1947 and 1976. This naturally had a deadly impact on the inhabitants, with the tomcod being hit quite hard, as they are filter feeders (PCB contaminants settle on the bottom river bed ). Their life span was reduced from an average 7 years to 2 years and many suffered from tumours.
However, they are fighting back and have evolved to be resistant to the toxin (unlike their counterparts in other ecosystems). Studies continue into their mutated, toxin resistant genes. Refer to this LiveScience.com link for the related article
May’s Friday Freebie is now available to download! It’s paper fortune cookies made with 100% fat free cartoons!
Click here to be the first to grab it! It also contains one new unpublished cartoon.
And you guessed it, the topic for today is the boomerang. Some boomerang facts you might not have known:
Thanks to GD from GD Konstantine’s Blog for submitting this joke on the Submit a joke page
So a little lesson in the wonders of thermodynamics….Obviously you are hard-core, because your eyes have not glazed over and you are still reading.
To put it simply, it helps to mathematically explain why a system will change from ordered to disordered over time. The theory introduced the property known as entropy, which is used to explain the ‘amount’ of order.
The theory unfolded in the 1800s when scientists were trying to understand the maths around fluid dynamics – specifically to help engineers improve the efficiency of steam exchangers (such as old steam trains!) However, it has found application in physics and helps explain why ultimately everything (including the universe) will move from a state of order (low entropy) to disorder (high entropy).
My explanation is no where near as elegant as that of Professor Brian Cox. For a succinct explanation (using a sandcastle!) watch this 2 minute video, taken from one of my all time favourite top 3 documentaries ever – The Wonders of the Universe
My thanks need to go to Mark from Australian Migration – This was his contribution to one of the possible reasons for the ultimate demise of those cute, green dinosaurs. If you have a theory, why not submit a joke on the Submit a joke page and I’ll have a crack at drawing it. I’m targeting 50:0!
You might recall an earlier Doug Dung Beetle post which explained that there are 3 types of dungs beetles – roller (Doug), tunneller and dweller (Doug’s cousin). Well for a bit of Friday fun, I thought it was time to have another poll. Tell us what you think – just click your choice, then hit the vote button – easy!
[polldaddy poll=6214557]
